Outer Ring: Generic Ice Planet Five (Formerly “Witch’s Tit” and before that “Girls Girls Girls”), President Hooligan Memorial Half-Price Intergalactic Spaceport.

The iris airlock door of the Unfortunate Predicament II shot open, Captain Garret and Father Terrence hurried inside and quickly shut the door, allowing only the faintest trickle of frost to follow them to the interior of the ship. The Captain set the bags down, and activated the intercom to the left of the airlock door.

“Alright, listen up assholes-”

“Ahem.” Father Terrence butted in, and with a small sigh Garret collected himself and began to speak again.

“Listen up...crew. We’re leaving the planet tonight for the Rex-Delta Quadrant. Crew meeting in fifteen minutes, and I want take-off in thirty. Chavez and Bleepqort, if ground control asks you anything just shut up and pretend you don’t speak common. Not uncommon for backwards places like this. Garret out.”

The captain lifted the grocery bags once more, and led Father Terrence past the kitchen and through the narrow halls of the freighter to the priest’s new quarters.

“Last cook lived here. He packed his shi-, I mean stuff before I kicked him to the curb. I asked Huang, the quartermaster, to clean it up before I got back, so hopefully it should be in good shape.”

The captain pressed his hand against the print reader on the wall, causing the door to slide open to reveal a cramped quarters that lingered of weed.

“Sorry about the smell, the last guy was a bit of a stoner. Didn’t realize he was smoking until a few days ago, so I had to fire him. Open flames outside of the kitchen are not good, you understand. Anyways, plenty of space for pictures of Jesus or...uh, whatever else you’re into.”

“Of Jesus! Yes! Splendid!”

Just then Garret noticed the massive and smelly yellow stains on the holy father’s new-to-him mattress.

“Oh God, those stains-”

“-Gosh.” The holy father interjected

“Oh gosh, those stains. Did he really piss on-”

Father Terrence coughed in a manner that was certainly approaching conspicuous. It was getting rather old for Garret, and frankly he wasn’t sure if the priest was coughing just to clear his throat, or to correct him again.

“The coughing, is that you saying you don’t like the word ‘piss’? or-”

Terrence coughed again.

“Oh sorry I was thinking through decorating. Does this ship have a bookshelf?” Father Terrence asked.

“Uh...I’ll have to ask. Anyways I’m going to have Huang deal with the piss-”

Terrence coughed a third time to interrupt the captain.

“Sorry,” Father Terrence said, “Clearing my throat. Also, you said the pee-word.”

“Piss?”

“Yes. That one”

“Oh, I won’t say the…”pee-word.” I’ll have Huang come and deal with the mattress. I’ll see you in ten minutes, in the kitchen, you remember where that is, yeah?”

“I think so. Three halls down to cook / If you cough when he speaks, he’ll look.”

“That more of that poem you’ve been saying?”

“Oh no, I just really like to repeat observations to myself in rhyme, helps me remember things.” The priest said with the enthusiasm of a labrador as he unpacked his single bag.

Captain Garret sighed and walked down to the kitchen with the remaining groceries for the all-hands meeting of the Unfortunate Predicament II.

As soon as we’re out of the system I can swear again. Twenty thousand credits. A month. This has gotta be worth it, right?

One by one the crew trickled in for the meeting. Jana Chavez, one of the pilots, was first. The Latina woman from Earth was the second tallest of the crew besides Bleepqort. Garret had found her in a jail cell on Gogol-73, and had bribed the guards to release her into his custody. He’d heard the stories, of course, that Jana Chavez had navigated a meteor storm in jump-space, so there was no chance Captain Garret was going to let theopportunity to pick her up go to waste.

Next was Bleepqort, the Hargokian from Mambo-5. Seven feet tall, with black dots for eyes, three fingered hands, a three-foot long neck, and a pear shaped body with stubby legs. Hargokians were certainly something to look at, practically Seussian in appearance, but they were damn loyal and Bleepqort was no exception. Garret and Bleepqort had been smuggling together for years, and frankly the only thing that bothered the captain about the pilot was that he smelled vaguely of gasoline and the incredibly high-pitched voice that made it hard not to laugh.

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Next came Loretta, she did the ship’s “accounting” (in addition to the actual accounting), and additionally served as the HR department of the Unfortunate Predicament II. She was also Captain Garret’s ex-wife. Loretta was a straight shooter who everyone could trust to do her job right, since she hated the captain’s guts for letting the dog eat her father’s ashes and was not about to let any shenanigans fly. That being said, Garrett constantly dreamed of one day replacing her and never hearing about poor Fido at dinnertime again.

U-Turn and Donut came in next. They were the muscle of the ship. If things got nasty, like they did at the bar earlier, they were usually the ones who “dealt” with it. Nice guys besides that, though. Donut was an avid baker (which was how he had earned the name, according to him) and U-Turn had a love of poetry. The Captain figured U-Turn and Father Terrence would get along swimmingly, if he just got the opportunity to introduce them.

The rest of the crew came spilling in far too quickly for the narrator to give them long-winded introductions, and the kitchen was most certainly over-capacity to the point of being unsafe.

Father Terrence wedged his way through the crowd of twenty to the center of the room and stood next to Garret as the captain addressed the crew.

“Alright everyone, listen up. Unfortunately I could not find a replacement for Harold-”

An “are you fucking serious?!” rose from someone in the crew, drawing a cough and a glare from the Father Terrence. Some of the crewmates were murmuring amongst themselves, fearing a repeat of the month of frozen meals when the cook previous to Harold had died in a freak gunfight accident.

“However!” Captain Garret shushed the crew, “We have a new passenger who has also offered to cook for us. I would like you to meet Father Terrence Gilmore of the Intergalactic Protestant League-”

“IPA!” Father Terrence chimed in.

A couple of polite claps could be heard throughout the crew, making it very clear that perhaps this was not a very popular decision. Certainly it ranked slightly above another month of frozen meal-pucks, and possibly slightly above warp-space fuel-station food in terms of desired quality, but there was trepidation about bringing a holy priest on board. This caused much chattering among the crew again, and Loretta, seeing everyone was distracted, seized a moment to pull the captain aside.

“Garret.”

“Loretta.”

“You know this is a smuggling ship, right? This is a terrible- terrible idea. What the Hell are you thinking?!” Lorretta asked angrily.

Garret peered over to Father Terrence, who stood amongst the noisy crew in his white and red IPA track-suit waiting blissfully unaware of what was being said between Loretta and Garret.

“Shhhhh! Don’t let him hear you say that word.” Garret whispered worriedly.

“Which word? Hell?!” Loretta whispered back.

“Yes! H-E-L-L!” the captain replied.

“And why shouldn’t I? Would that make him leave?” Lorreta then raised her voice to say “That would be one HELL of a relief!”

“-heck!” Father Terrence chimed in from across the room.

“Loretta stop. Please. I promise he’s worth whatever weird shit he’s going to bring to this ship.” The captain said, still whispering.

“Really? I don’t think that guy is worth anything he could afford to pay. As your ex-wife, HR, and accountant I really think you should just ditch this goober and get the-,” she paused and then spoke nearly-shouting “HELL off of this FUCKING iceblock you absolute moron!”

“Heck! Please!” Father Terrence once more interjected.

Loretta lowered her voice again: “Shit like this is why I divorced you. Constantly trying to make that quick buck with no concern for others. What’s he paying you, five hundred credits and a promise that he’s got more money somewhere else? Only reason I’m still on this ship is because you pay me well, and because everyone on the crew likes me slightly more than you”

It was true, but it still hurt. Garret sighed and rubbed his temples.

I need whiskey and a cigarette. At least she’ll shut up when she hears how much he’s paying.

“So you’re saying you don’t think the priest is worth twenty thousand credits a month?”

Loretta’s jaw dropped.

“Are you sure he has that much?” she asked.

“Yup, sent it as we were walking back from groceries.” Garret

“Ignore everything I said. Give everyone a raise if he’s paying that kind of cash, and they won’t care either. Do you know how he got it?”

“No clue. Does it matter? We don’t know how half of our contracts got their cash anyways.”

“Okay okay okay. Fair. The man’s worth twenty thousand a month. He’s a little weird. But he’s cargo. We’ve carried weird cargo before.”

Loretta thought back to the pucks of frozen penguin meat they had smuggled earlier that year (and failed to deliver) and nodded to the captain in agreement.

“Give em’ a raise, and they’ll be happy about it.”

She was right, and he loathed it.

Just as Garret was about to address the crew about the raise, Chavez and Bleepqort noticeably absent, the pink alien’s voice came over the intercom, sounding like an over-chewed dog’s squeaky toy.

“Captain, we’ve got a problem. You’re needed in the cockpit.”

Garret ran up several flights of metal stairs, to the large cockpit of the strangely-shaped Unfortunate Predicament II. As soon as he entered the room, Chavez spoke.

“Some Sadalsuudian guys, say they’re the police. Looking for that priest guy, and more importantly you. Say they have you on video entering the ship.”

Garret let out another long sigh.

Got to be fucking kidding me.

“Why are we not launching now?”

“That wouldn’t be a good look, captain. Sky is full, gotta wait for our turn.” Chavez responded.

“You’re Jana Chavez, correct?”

“Correct sir.”

“You flew through a jump-space meteor storm, correct?”

“Correct sir.”

“Then I want you to take our ship, and fly through the other ships, and get us the Hell off of this ice-bucket”

“Captain,” The intercom crackled with Father Terrence’s voice, “Heck.”

Garret glared at Bleepqort, whose headset was still set to “on,” and then reached past Chavez to pink alien’s headset to violently unplug it.

“Jana Chavez, just launch the fucking ship. Bleepqort, tell the crew to sit down now.”

“You unplugged my headset sir.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.” He said as he stamped the code on the intercom in frustration.

“Everyone, strap in. Lift-off in ten seconds. Make sure to assist our passenger first.”

Jana counted down “One mississippi… two mississippi…ten!” and gunned the throttle, throwing the bulky ship fast towards the star-laden sky as the groceries Terrence and Garret had bought (still on the prep table of the kitchen) fell all over the crew of the Unfortunate Predicament II who were lucky to have avoided eating Father Terrence Gilmore’s infamous potato salad.